


The Haunted Shack Of Danville

by Andian



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Haunted Houses, Horror, Humor, M/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2020-12-27 23:27:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21127007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andian/pseuds/Andian
Summary: “This week on Buzzfeed Unsolved we are investigating the haunted shack of Danville as part of our ongoing investigation into the question “Are ghosts real?” Back in the 1860s a man mysteriously burnt to death in this very place.”“Mysterious as in “fire hurts people." Shane interjected.Ryan ignored him. “The man who lived in the shack, known in the village only as Old Jon, was a hermit and rumored to perform dark rituals in his home.”Some part of Shane suddenly perked up.





	The Haunted Shack Of Danville

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fenellaevangela](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fenellaevangela/gifts).

“Look at it,” Ryan said, anxiety already creeping into his voice. “I can smell the evil already.”

Shane cocked his head. “I only smell grass and cows. Does evil smell like cows?”

“Ignore the cows, they came later.”

“After the evil? So they are trespassing on the evil’s land?”

Ryan snorted.

“Do you … do you think the evil can complain to like city hall or something? Like “Hey, so I just opened my door for the first time in one hundred years and now there are suddenly cows everywhere?!”

Shane let out a chuckle, pitching his voice lower to imitate Ryan’s pattern of speech.

“And it’s like “Who is calling?! It’s me, the ghost of the man who burnt to death here one hundred years ago! Yes, I still have the deed of ownership for the land!”

A loud laugh escaped Ryan and something inside Shane’s stomach fluttered at the sound and the sight. Do it now, he thought almost dazed, now without any cameras or anybody around.

He opened his mouth only to be interrupted by the crows. Plural. Dozens of them to be precisely. All of them suddenly flying up into the sky from behind the small run-down shack they were looking at. The cows at the field behind the shack raised their heads, staring at the crows while chewing. The dark cloud of crows circled above them, their small bodies forming ever-changing patterns before they suddenly made a sharp turn and flew into the woods surrounding the shack.

Beside him Ryan’s face turned pale.

“That…” he began, voice shaking. “That can’t be good.”

Shane shrugged, more annoyed than anything else at the appearance of the crows.

“It’s normal. I mean it’s fall,” he said. “You know migration and all.”

“Yes but they came out of nowhere! You can’t pretend that’s normal!”

“It’s just birds, Ryan. Are you also scared of the cows?”

Ryan glared at him but a bit of color returned to his face.

“It’s still weird,” he mumbled. “And I am so looking up crow migrations once we are back in the hotel.”

“As long as you don’t tell me about the results I am fine with that,” Shane said. “Are we going to…” he trailed off, nodded instead towards the shack. Ryan squared his shoulders and forced something that could be determination onto his face.

“Yes,” he said. “Let’s … let’s do this. Time to find us some ghosts!” Shane couldn’t help but be slightly impressed by his bravado, fake or not.

“Well then, ghosts here we come” he said, making a hand gesture. “After you.” Ryan went on ahead and Shane followed, though not without shooting one last glare at the forest where the crows had disappeared into.

From up close the shack looked even worse. There was a huge hole in the roof and the rest of it was partly sunken in. Had there been any paint on the wooden walls it was now long gone, wind and rain doing its duty over the years, while the boarded up windows were moldy and riddled with wormholes.

If there hadn’t been a cow in the background, watching them with dull curiosity, it would have been the perfect setting for a horror movie, Shane had to admit.

“Cozy,” he said loudly. “We’re not staying overnight though, are we?”

Ryan shook his head. “Thank god, no. The legal team said given the condition of the house that would be stupid and a lawsuit waiting to happen. One less creepy place to steal my beauty sleep.”

“Dunno, unless it rains it might be cool. Certainly we’d get some good material.”

“Yeah, TJ and you can stay after we actually start filming.” Ryan said, fumbling around with the keys to the door. “I’m out. King-size beds and room service for me, baby.”

“Just wait, TJ and me are going to have a cool party here with demons and ghosts and Bigfoot while you are eating a sad room service burger all by yourself in your hotel room,” Shane said.

“And you will film absolutely nothing of it unless TJ manages to get our cameras back,” Ryan shot back. The cameras where somewhere, the airline had assured them. Somewhere though they currently weren’t quite sure where that somewhere was. TJ had still been arguing with the airline representative about the roughly $5000 worth of equipment that was currently “somewhere”. Ryan had suggested getting a headstart and scouting the location and Shane, like a fool, had agreed. Partly maybe because being alone with Ryan would be a good opportunity.

Alone like they were right now. Shane threw a quick wary look around for any crows but unless the cow still watching them grew wings and black feathers they were safe.

He took a deep breath. Now or never, he thought.

“Ryan, I…” A loud cracking sound interrupted him. Ryan yelped, taking a step back from the door that had swung open on its own.

“It’s…”

“It’s an old door and you just unlocked it” Shane interrupted Ryan immediately. They were not going there. His limit on doors opening had been reached last season, thank you very much.

“Let’s just go inside and catch us some ghosts,” he mumbled, pushing the door open the rest of the way with maybe a bit more force than strictly necessary. Stupid doors, he grumbled silently. And stupid crows. The universe seemed hell-bent on stopping him from telling Ryan.

The inside of the shack somehow looked even worse than its outside which in a way was almost impressive considering how run-down the outside already was. There was a puddle of water below the hole in the roof, smelling stagnant with algae growing in it. Shane walked over to it, curiously peering at the plants. He frowned a bit when he recognized some of them.

“Oh man, look at this!” Ryan’s excited voice broke Shane out of his musings. Shane turned around, seeing Ryan at the other side of the room gawking at something on the wall. Making his way to him Shane raised an eyebrow when saw what Ryan was looking.

“So the ghost is into art,” he said. “Really not that impressive. I’ve seen better.”

“It’s a fucking pentagram, Shane! In red! In a haunted cabin!”

“You sure it’s a pentagram? I do think it kind of looks like somebody was playing tic-tac-toe. And they lost.”

“Oh my god, do you want it to start bleeding or something?!”

Shane said nothing, only gave the –really bad- drawing in front of them a considering and maybe slightly prompting look.

Ryan’s eyes widened and he spluttered.

“You can’t be serious!”

“All I am saying if it starts bleeding it would at least make it worth destroying a perfectly good wall for.”

He bent down to stare closer at the pentagram. If he was willing to entertain Ryan and actually call it a pentagram. Privately he thought it was an absolute disgrace and looked like somebody had drawn it with their eyes closed and blackout drunk.

“Is it blood?” Ryan asked, an anxious edge in his voice.

Slowly Shane reached for the pentagram. There was a spark of something as he touched it and Shane froze for a brief moment. Long enough for Ryan to notice though, the way he usually did when it came to Shane.

“Oh my god,” Ryan squeaked. “It is blood, isn’t it?!”

Shane removed his hand from the pentagram and turned to Ryan, a serious expression his face.

“A closer look revealed… ” he began with a grave voice. “That this is in fact … spray paint. You know the kind of thing kids use to paint weird stuff on the walls of buildings. Preferably abandoned ones.”

“How would you know that by just touching it?” Ryan asked, anxiety replaced by wariness.

“Blood dries dark, almost black, not red,” Shane explained and then almost bit his tongue.

Ryan just laughed though, a slightly nervous high-pitched giggle but a giggle nonetheless.

“I am not even going to ask how you know that,” he said which all things considered was probably for the best, Shane thought.

Or maybe not, he then suddenly thought. Maybe this was a good transition for his plans.

“Hey Ryan there is something I-“ he began once more, only to break off himself this time.

Because the damn pentagram had just began to bleed. On its own. Out of the corner of his eyes he glanced at Ryan who thankfully was currently occupied with his phone.

Quickly Shane reached down and wiped away the blood. Or red paint. Shane really hoped it was just paint, blood was really difficult to get out of your clothes. Or explain to your partner in crime. There were limits on what Shane was willing to inflict on Ryan and “pentagrams bleeding blood” were right there below “blinking paintings” and above “getting thrown off a bridge by a goat.”

Discreetly he pulled out a tissue and tried to wipe his hand only to realize that it was already clean. Shane stared at his hand. Only pale skin without a hint of red was in sight. The blood –or paint or grape juice because really who knew- was gone. It had felt wet and rather real on Shane’s hand and he was quite sure he hadn’t just imagined it.

This, he decided, was a worrying development.

“Don’t touch it, I want it to still be there once we actually film,” Ryan said.

“There goes my secret plan to ruin this show and get us cancelled.”

“I thought that was what the hotdaga was for.”

That actually managed to sting a tiny bit. It must have shown on his face because Ryan elbowed his side.

“Just joking man, you know your sceptic BS and denial are like 25% of our views.”

“I’d give myself 35%. At least.”

Ryan cracked a smile.

“Those ten percent are for those few times when you came up with something else besides “It must have been the wind.”

“I will have you know that I put a lot of effort into trying to convince you that sometimes the most logical answer is also the most likely one.”

He fixed his glasses in the smug way that he knew infuriated Ryan.

“So, want to practice your story time?” Shane asked. There might have been some ulterior motives behind his question too. The plants growing in the puddle, the pentagram on the wall. The blood.

Shane would be lying if he said that he wasn’t curious to know just what exactly the deal was with this place. Burn-deaths were gruesome, sure but he felt it couldn’t be just that.

“Sure. Get ready to condescendingly roll your eyes at everything I say.”

“I train in front of my mirror ever day”, Shane joked.

Ryan gave the room a critical once-over, obviously already calculating where the best place for his little speech was. Shane made a mental note to ask TJ to find them folding chairs before he joined up with them. Sometimes they were lucky and they were shooting in places that had something resembling working furniture. This place was on the complete opposite end of this scale however, not even having an actual working roof.

“Okay, over there,” Ryan decided and Shane shouldn’t be surprised that he had chosen the spot in front of the pentagram.

“This week on Buzzfeed Unsolved we are investigating the haunted shack of Danville as part of our ongoing investigation into the question “Are ghosts real?” Ryan began, slipping into his narrator voice. Shane would never admit it but he quite liked Ryan doing his voice. He sounded very assertive whenever he was using it, confidently listing facts and fiction alike.

Shane might have been listening a bit too closely though this time because Ryan continued before Shane had the chance to shake his head and deny the existence of any ghosts.

“Back in the 1860s a man mysteriously burnt to death in this very place.”

“Mysterious as in “fire hurts people”, Shane interjected.

Ryan ignored him. “The man who lived in the shack, known in the village only as Old Jon, was a hermit and rumored to perform dark rituals in his home.”

Some part of Shane suddenly perked up.

“Some even say that he has been working on an elixir to make himself immortal.”

“Well, I don’t think it worked.”

“Maybe he just didn’t finish it before he … you know before he died.” Ryan said.

“I feel not dying is a very important part of the whole “becoming immortal” thing. Feels like it should have been higher up his priority list.”

“Well, anyway, he did die before he had a chance to find out if he could become immortal,” Ryan said resolutely. ”Maybe it was during one of his experiments, maybe it was just an accident and he just lit a candle one night and then tripped and you know…”

Ryan made wild gesture with his hands that made Shane want to laugh. But he didn’t.

There was a brief of moment of surprised hesitation on Ryan’s face as if he had been expecting some kind of reaction from Shane before he continued.

“On one cold November night in 1867, people from the village close by saw black smoke rising from the shack,” Ryan continued, voice dropping an octave.

A shudder ran over Shane’s back.

“A man who in the past had done business with Old Jon decided to see what was going on. But it was snowing heavily and so he didn’t make it to the cabin until three days later.”

Sounds like somebody wasn’t all that eager to come here, Shane wanted to say. But for some reason he did find it hard to open his mouth.

“Once he had arrived he was met with a gruesome scene.”

There was something hypnotic about Ryan’s voice, Shane thought.

“There had been a fire inside the cabin that had burnt a hole into the roof through which the smoke had risen. But expect for the body and the hole in the roof, nothing in the cabin had been burnt.”

Ryan was good storyteller. Shane could almost smell the smoke, taste the hints of ash still lingering in the air. Recoil at the stench of burnt meat, the way the fur trader gagged as he saw the ash and what was left of Old Jon, the horror in the man’s eyes as he saw the symbols and patterns drawn on the floor, as he…

Shane couldn’t move his body. He tried to blink, tried to dislodge the vision of the fur trader and the burnt corpse inside the pentagram but it was no use. Not a single muscle inside his body was following the orders his brain was screaming at them. His vision had become twofold, like a piece of paper with two different images printed on it and he couldn’t really seem to focus on either.

And then he felt something moving. It crawled from his hand up his arm under his clothes, wet and cold and if he could he’d have screamed at this point.

His eyes were frozen though, staring unmovingly straight ahead as he felt the something beneath his clothes wander over this chest and up his neck, leaving behind a tingly and damp feeling as if a dozen spiders had slowly made their way across his skin. Wet spiders, he thought and it was such a bizarre thought it almost made the panic flooding through his body disappear.

But something red then started creeping into his vision and he suddenly remembered the blood from the pentagram.

I should have told Ryan on the way, was his last thought before everything turned red.

Suddenly he was able to move his body again though and without a moment of hesitation Shane threw up his hands, forced himself to gather his thoughts enough to concentrate and drew a symbol in front of him, quickly stepping into it.

Something screamed and it felt like Shane’s chest was going to burst open. He fell on the ground, overwhelmed by pain, coughing wildly as he felt something wet forcing its way through his throat and out, cutting off his windpipe.

It reached his mouth, a coopery taste spreading, blood dripping from his mouth and on the ground in front of him as he almost gagged on it before it was finally out of is mouth. He stared at it for a moment, his chest still burning like fire, painfully aware that it wasn't his own blood he had just spit out. 

“What are you?” A voice then suddenly said and Shane quickly turned around, scrambling away from the source of the voice as quickly as he could while also trying to get back on his feet. When he turned around he had to swallow a scream.

In front of him stood a man. Well, in front of him stood something that once had been a man.

Now it was only ash, vaguely forming the silhouette of a man. Once more Shane's sight changed, forcing the vision of the burnt corpse back into his mind but he blinked and only the ashen silhouette of the man remained, a ghostly leftover of the burnt body.

Shane’s panicky looked around for Ryan but he was gone. And the cabin, while still dusty and dirty, had lost some of its decay, spider webs replaced by weird symbols drawn on the floor and herbs and other plants hanging from the walls. The hole in the roof was gone, the puddle beneath it replaced by a pentagram with something bloody lying in the middle of it. Shane refused to look too closely at it.

“Old Jon, I assume?” Shane said weakly after a long pause.

“Jonathan Hor. What are you?”

“Impressive … impressive resurrection spell,” Shane said instead of answering, trying to gather his thoughts.

The man just snorted.

“It’s not. You might notice the lack of skin and internal organs. You got to make do with what you have when the only living sacrifices you can get are a few bugs and a rat here and there. But the fact that you know what a spell like this should look like already tells me something about you.”

Jon raised his hands. Or rather the ash formed the impression of hands being raised.

“Have you come to steal my potion of immortality, witch?” Jon said darkly.

Frantically Shane shook his head.

“No, no, I promise we are just here to film a minisode! The new season starts soon and this is going to be a good teaser and it was close by and Ryan liked it because we won’t have to do a sleepover even though that always helps to get the views up and…”

He was rambling. He was rambling and trying to explain YouTube analytics to a 150 year old ghost. He really wasn’t very good with that witch thing, was he?

“I do not know of these views you are talking about,” Jon said. But there was something lighter in his voice now and he did lower his hands. “Though I do believe you. You were surprised when your companion mentioned the potion. I could feel it.”

Yes, because you were inside of me you creepy creeper, Shane thought. He was smart enough not to say it out loud though.

“You are young, witch,” Jon continued. “Your powers are weak and faint. Easily taken by my blood into the space between the realms.”

“Hey, I managed to get you out, didn’t I,” Shane protested, not mentioning that he had used the spell only twice before, once after having eaten something truly disgusting containing pickles and maple syrup for a video. And once to see if it could get rid of a hangover. It had, in so far as he had gone on to vomit out the alcohol still left in his stomach.

“But yeah,“ he admitted. “I am still … developing the whole actual power thing.”

Puberty was usual the time when those powers would manifest in his family’s bloodline. His mother had trained him as she had been trained by her father and he was expected to train his children one day. Trained him to be prepared for this day when drawing pentagrams would actually be effective to summon things from other realms, when weird plants growing in puddles could be used to create even weirder potions. When drawing signs and concentrating meant making magic.

But puberty had come and gone and failed to bring with it that certain spark that would have turned Shane into a witch.

He had gotten over it. He really had after a while.

“You’ve been touched by many creatures from the other realms, young witch,” Jon said, staring at him. At least Shane thought he was staring at him.

“You sound like my mom,” Shane mumbled, only half joking. The first two seasons of Unsolved had gone swimmingly. And then suddenly magic hadn’t just been a thing his family could do and he couldn’t. Something had changed.

“They changed you,” Jon continued, suddenly sounding fascinated. “Young creature, they made you something else.”

His mom hadn’t said that. But maybe she had just been too polite. Or maybe she hadn’t known just why Shane’s magic had suddenly kicked in, about 15 years too late and why it had been so … so weird.

“Not a light burden,” Jon said.

“With all due respect but I am really not looking for a ghost mentor or something here,” Shane said. “I was doing totally fine just ignoring this whole thing and maybe only trying a few spells to heat up leftover pizza here and there.”

He had almost set the pizza box on fire when he had tried that.

“But you were about to tell him, were you not?”

Shan blinked. He hadn’t expected the ghost to pick up on that particular thing he was trying – and failing – to accomplish.

“How did you-“ he began when he suddenly realized something. “The crows,” he said slowly. “And the door. And the pentagram. Man, you were totally cockblocking me here!”

Jon tilted his head.

“If cockblocking means stopping you from telling your mortal companion about me and ghosts in general, then yes. I have totally cockblocked you.”

Shane couldn’t help but giggle at this.

“God,” he mumbled. “I wish Ryan was here to hear this. He’d love this. I mean he’d hate it too but he’d also love it.”

“You have come to hunt me, have you not little creature.” Jon continued. “Ghost hunters, you called yourself.”

“Yes, but I mean also not really? It’s for our show … we try to talk to ghosts but we don’t actually ever saw one. Or really tried to catch one.”

Not even with his newly awakened magical powers had Shane been able to get much of a read on any of their haunted houses. His mother and grandfather also never mentioned seeing any ghosts either. And their magic was working like it was supposed to. He had taken it to mean that there truly weren’t any ghosts.

The man in front of him, just ash really but somehow still seeming to look straight through him as if he tried to catch him in a lie, made him reconsider this stance though.

“I wouldn’t … I wouldn’t tell him about this. About me, I mean,” Shane continued quickly, both unwilling and unable to stand the look of the ghost much longer. “Not before I figure out myself what the hell exactly is wrong with me.” He couldn’t quite keep down the bitterness in his last sentence.

If he had just been like the rest of the family it would have been fine. He’d have known what to do with his powers, would have known what worked and what didn’t. Instead of bumbling around, trying to figure out which of the things he’d been taught as truths till he had turned thirteen still applied to him and which didn’t. Most of them didn’t.

Whoever – or more likely whatever – had changed him and activated his magic powers had seriously screwed up.

“But you wanted to tell him something,” Jon interrupted his musings. “I felt it. I felt your emotions. In turmoil, desperate to escape.”

A flush creeped over Shane’s face. He hadn’t quite realized how far his feelings had developed.

“Uh, yes. I wanted to tell him something…” He was thinking of a delicate way to put this. Dude was a ghost but still a ghost from the 1860s. Couldn’t really expect him to be woke and stuff.

“It was more … personal. Like … very personal.” His face was burning. And in a completely different way than the ashen face staring at him had burnt. Shane wondered if the ghost could still sense his feelings. Really hoped he couldn’t.

“I see,” Jon said after a very long pause. “I have left this with my mortal body. Those matters of love.”

Well, Shane thought slightly panicked, that answered that question.

“But I remember it still. At least parts of it.” There was something almost wistful in the man’s voice now.

“You and friend may do whatever you have planned to do,” Jon then said. “I will not disturb you. I will not attempt to sacrifice your bodies to bring myself back into the mortal realm. This I promise, young one.”

He reached out and touched Shane’s head, so fast Shane had no time to react.

“Good luck, little creature. Whatever you turn out to be,” was the last thing Shane heard.

The red came and went and then Shane found himself blinking as he stood in the cabin without the ghost anywhere to be seen.

“You okay, Shane?” Ryan was staring at him, looking worried and Shane could have almost cried with happiness to see him, standing in the shack that was again mostly spider webs and dust.

“Yes, fine,” he said flippantly instead. “Why you asking?”

“You have been kind of quiet, you know. TJ wrote, he is on his way. Either he got our stuff back or we have to figure out how we can fit new camera equipment into our budget.”

“Great, that’s great” Shane said absent-mindedly. He was discreetly opening and closing his hand, flexing his toes, trying to check over his body to see if he truly had full control over it again.

“So uh … there is something I wanted to talk to you about for a while now…”

Jon had said he wouldn’t attack Ryan or him but well, maybe it would be best to wrap this shot up as quickly as possible.

“Like I understand this might not be the best place for it but I figure if I do it here it will be less awkward than in our office and if you … if you want you can pretend it didn’t happen …”

Once he had some privacy he’d call his mother and asked about protection spells. He hadn’t gotten the one he knew to work on Ryan, no matter how hard he had tried but maybe there were more.

“We’ve are friends and I wouldn’t want to risk that but also I … I mean I wanted to ask… if you’d like maybe want to, once we’re back home I mean, you know, just you and me and….

Also he really should stop touching pentagrams in the future, no matter how badly drawn they were and…

What Ryan said was suddenly catching up to him and he snapped his head up, staring at Ryan. Who was blushing.

“Are you trying to ask me out?” Shane blurted out.

Ryan’s expression froze. Then he took a deep breath and nodded.

“If you don’t want to we can just…” he began.

“Ryan, I’ve been trying to ask you out since the damn crows.”

Ryan blinked.

“What… really? You let the crows get in the way?”

“There were a lot of them.”

“I mean yes, but still! You know you could have said something after that! Save me the trouble of doing it now!”

“Look, I figured the crows would have ruined the mood a bit so I figured I’d wait.”

“We’re in a creepy haunted house, how is this better?”

“At least there aren’t any crows now.”

“I think technically there probably still could be some crows. There were really a lot of them. Maybe one of them hid behind the cows.”

Silence settled between them. Shane had to suppress the urge to laugh and Ryan was barely holding back a grin himself.

“So, it’s settled then,” Shane said. “Once we’re back home we … we are going to … going on a date.”

“If you want to,” Ryan said, grin turning into a softer smile.

“Yes,” Shane said, equally soft. “Yes, I want to.”

He still didn’t have a clue about the whole witch thing. And ghosts were real and they also talked to him which was an existential crisis all on its own.

But Shane guessed that at the very least he had a date with Ryan to look forward to.


End file.
